Q&A with Brian Morton

Director, Program in Writing Sarah Lawrence College

Nov. 4, 2013

Brian Morton

Written by

Dorothy Conigliaro

Sarah Lawrence alumnus and faculty member Brian Morton is the author of the novels "The Dylanist," "A Window Across the River," "Breakable You," and his 1998 book, "Starting Out in the Evening," which was adapted into the 2007 film starring Frank Langella. Among other honors, the book received the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He currently directs the writing program at Sarah Lawrence. He has also worked for "Dissent" a magazine of politics and culture where he was executive editor from 1995 to 2000.

You are one of a number of writers who has “come back to roost” at your alma mater. How is it to be on the other side of the desk?It’s thrilling, really. Sarah Lawrence is a special place. When you teach a class here, you meet one-on-one with each student every other week. That means you get to know each other in a way that just doesn’t happen in other schools. I loved getting to know my teachers when I was studying here in the ’70s, and I’ve loved getting to know my students since I started teaching here in ’98.

Did you know from the start that you were born to write, or did your path lead you elsewhere after college?I’ve been lucky in that I’ve always known what I wanted to do. I started writing fiction in college and I never wanted to do anything else. That doesn’t mean that anything about it came easy: it took me 15 years to publish my first novel, and another seven to publish the second. But even when it was frustrating, there was a feeling of great security in knowing that I was trying my best at the vocation that I cared about most. I always felt that I’d rather fail at writing than succeed at anything else.

As executive editor of Dissent, did you lean mainly to “the left?” Yes, and still do. There was an episode of Star Trek where somebody from the 20th century somehow ends up 400 years in the future, and all he wants to know is how his investments are doing. He’s taken aback when Captain Picard tells him that human beings are no longer motivated by money—they’re motivated by the desire to learn, to explore, to improve themselves. Maybe I’m naïve, but I still think we might get there someday. I guess you could call me a Star Trek socialist.

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How do you measure out your time between your teaching assignments and writing? How much time do you spend writing?What with teaching and having two kids, I find that I’m happy if I can write for two hours a day. In earlier days, I used to try to write for five or six hours—but the funny thing is, now that I have less time, I enjoy it more. When you end every writing session wishing you had just a little more time, you’re eager to get back to it the next day.

It must be extremely challenging to “teach” your students how to write. How do you instill in them a love of the written word?I don’t often feel that I need to try to instill in them a love of writing or reading. Most of them already have it. T.S. Eliot once said that a good teacher of writing regards himself and his students as explorers of the same mysteries, and I’ve always liked that idea. So I mostly see myself as accompanying them for a little while as they explore the mysteries of fiction-writing. When I was a student at Sarah Lawrence, I was lucky enough to work with E.L. Doctorow. This was after the Book of Daniel, after Ragtime—it was after he’d become world-famous—but he somehow managed to convey the feeling that our writing was as important as his. It led me to the belief that taking your students’ work seriously is the most important thing a writing teacher can do.

Do you have any time to read the works of others? If so, what authors appeal to you most?Among writers who are around today, a few whom I admire are Doctorow, Geoff Dyer, Jennifer Egan, Nick Hornby, James Hynes, and Zadie Smith. Also Philip Roth—I hope he was only playing with us when he claimed he’d retired from writing.

When you aren’t reading, writing, or teaching, how do you spend your “spare” time?Hanging around with my family, mostly. And spending too much time on the Internet, like everyone else. ■